Refugees are arriving in Whatcom within weeks. Here’s how you can help
With approval for a new refugee resettlement office, World Relief is expecting its first arrivals within weeks and is seeking donations for families immigrating from Afghanistan and elsewhere.
Steven Shetterly, World Relief’s Whatcom County resettlement manager, told The Bellingham Herald that families will need a house or apartment to rent, furnishings, gift cards for food and used cars.
“We are also looking for employers who would be willing to consider what it might look like to hire refugees, and would be happy to talk to anyone who wants to know more about that,” Shetterly said. “And of course, financial donations are a huge help as they’ll enable us to expand our staffing to provide more than the basics.”
Information about donations is at World Relief’s temporary local website, and on their Facebook page, Whatcom Refugee Resettlement Project.
World Relief Whatcom also has an Amazon Wish List site to make sending donations simple, Shetterly said.
“We are expecting our first arrivals in November and December (15 people total in those two months), with the remaining 60 to come in the remainder of the fiscal year (through the end of September 2022),” Shetterly told The Herald.
“This is an accelerated timeline from what we had originally proposed nine months ago when we started this process (when) we were expecting our first arrivals in late winter or early spring. Due to the current refugee crisis nationwide, though, it made sense to roll things out a bit earlier,” he said.
Not all refugees arriving in Whatcom County will be from Afghanistan — although that’s where the most federal resources are focused at the moment, Shetterly said.
Seattle and other locations have seen refugees from Sudan, Somalia, Myanmar, Syria, Nepal, Bhutan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Iran and Iraq in addition to many other countries including Afghanistan, he said.
To help explain its local work, Whatcom Refugees is hosting a free “Cultural Humility and Trauma-Informed Care” webinar from 6:30-7:30 p.m. Nov. 3.
